Freyne Land

Almost 100 Democrats turned out for the Burlington Democratic Party fundraiser ($20) at the St. John's Club in Lakeside Sunday evening.

Among them former Governor of Vermont and Ambassador to Switzerland Madeleine Kunin (on the far left in the photo), and our current representative in the U. S. House of Representatives - Peter Welch.

Only five attendees, however, signed the petition offered by the four "democrats" out front who did not attend the event inside. Madeleine was not among them.

"We agree to disagree," said Ambassador Kunin when asked why she wouldn't sign. Straddlin' Madeleine did tell the protesters, "I admire your guts for standing out here."

Guts?

The petition she would not sign states, in part:

Whereas George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have:

1. deliberately misled the nation about the threat from Iraq in order to justify a war,
2. condoned the torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention and US law,
3. approved illegal electronic surveillance of American citizens without a warrant, and

....Whereas 39 Vermont towns, the State Committee of the Democratic Party of Vermont, and the Vermont State Senate passed resolutions calling for impeachment investigations of Bush and Cheney;

Therefore, I call upon Vermont Congressman Peter Welch to introduce or cosponsor a resolution calling for investigation of Bush and Cheney regarding these charges, and if the investigations support the charges, to vote to impeach them as provided in the Constitution of the United States of America.

Congressman Welch [on left in photo], the only millionaire in the Vermont congressional delegation, was friendly to the Impeachment Foursome and spoke with them for 5-10 minutes, expressing his distaste for and opposition to the current corrupt and dishonest regime in the White House. But Welch, like Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, believes impeachment would only slow things down and delay and sidetrack investigations of the bankrupt Bush Administration already underway.

Inside, Welchie told the happy Burlington Democrats he's a guy who loves his job.

“I love serving in Congress," said Peter. "I’m almost embarrassed by how much I’m enjoying it.”

Al Walskey of West Burke, wearing the blue Welch for Congress tee-shirt, told the Congressman he had served nine years in the U.S. Army (1963-72).  A calibration specialist in electronics. Two tours in Vietnam.

"I just think he stood his ground same as he has been," Mr. Walskey told Freyne Land afterwards,  "and we’re hoping that he’s going to come around. I think he sort of indicated that September is that time frame that they either have to make something happen, or Congress will be able to muster enough votes to override a veto."

And we did ask, and Al told us he had voted for Peter Welch last November.

Nice flowers, huh?

I know, I know, I have to leave for the Burlington political event of the evening - a Burlington Dems fund-raiser with Rep. Peter Welch the headliner. And impeachment supporters to nudge him their way.

But it's already been such a special day for exploration and conversation and new people and lifted spirits. From Paul, the 80-year-old in the Brooks Drugs parking lot who told me how Buddhism has cured his lung cancer, to Stephanie, the lovely, warm woman in the Uncommon Grounds coffee shop who introduced herself, told me that she loves my work, reads this blog regularly, and is "praying for me."

Every day a gift, eh?

We are all in this together, you know.

And what about the baby-boomers from Ontario, Canada in the 1959 Austin-Healey at the top of the Main Street hill?

I had pulled up behind them an hour earlier at the bottom of the hill by the waterfront and inquired about make, model and year. Friendly folks. Also did my diplomatic duty and welcomed them to beautiful Burlington, and it was indeed beautiful this morning.

Time flies!

It's started out over three years ago as "Dean for America," and has evolved and grown into "Democracy for America" with an H.Q. in South Burlington, Vermont, outposts in 49 states [all except Wyoming at the moment], and 600,000 members!

They called it "Birthday Bash 2007" - Friday evening's Happy Three-Year-Old Birthday Bash/Fundraiser at the ECHO Center on Burlington's waterfront. The event drew about 80 folks from near and far who have contributed time, effort, money and energy to former Gov. Howard Dean's national political star.

The 2004 presidential hopeful from Vermont did not win the Democratic Party nomination, but he is the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee [DNC] and a household word coast-to-coast!

That's Ho-Ho's younger brother James H. Dean, DFA Chair, and DFA Executive Director Tom Hughes [right] at last night's event. Not hard to tell Jim and Ho-Ho were cut from the same cloth.

Tom Hughes is a UVM grad who volunteered for Michael Dukakis back in 1988. He did advance work for Vice President Al Gore before a stint in 1998 as Executive Director of the Vermont Democratic Party. Managed Doug Racine's gubernatorial disaster in 2002, too. Can't win 'em all.

Unfortunately, the two political "stars" who were pitched as attractions in the fundraiser's invite - Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch were no-shows.

Ol' Bernardo had been described as "invited," whereas Welchie's appearance had been a sure thing. At least until Vermont's congressman ran into plane trouble in Washington. Word was Pedro the Congressman was stuck on the tarmac with the aircraft door closed, thereby preventing even an audio appearance at the Democracy for America fundraiser via cellphone.

Bummer.

Jimmy Dean explained to us that older brother Howard wasn't there because DFA is "a political action committee" and the event was "a fundraiser."

Older brother Howard chairs the DNC, which Jimmy explained, is also a PAC.

Apparently there's some sort of conflict in that, which would make Howard's attendance awkward, though Jimmy couldn't nail down clearly and concisely just what the conflict was. Something about an appearance of favoritism by someone in a role that demands neutrality.

Jimmy Dean also told us that DFA will be endorsing a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination by year's end.  DFA will have an endorsement vote among its membership, he told the gathering at the waterfront fundraiser.

At present, DFA is busy with its "activist training program," said Dean the Younger. The key ingredient, he said, is teaching activists to communicate one-on-one effectively. That means training people to be able to communicate a message using "27 words in nine seconds while making three points."

"At the end of the day," said Dean the Younger, "it's all about leadership development."

And, oh yes, the DFA Fundraiser attracted a few impeachment supporters who had hoped to see Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch.

Though those guys were no-shows, Eliza Earle of Richmond [center], said they had plenty of "good conversation" with folks passing by both for the DFA Event and the Chew-Chew Festival.

They said they hope to catch Welch on Sunday at another Democratic Party event at the St. John's Club in Lakeside on Burlap's South End.

That's what it looks like from the "far-left" panelist seat on the "Vermont This Week" set at Vermont Public Television at Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester.

In fact, that's exactly what it looked like at the taping at 3:30 this afternoon with Sweet Sue Allen, currently the editor of the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus on the left, filling in for WPTZ-TV's Stewart Ledbetter, the regular host. Then that's Freeps Statehouse/political writer Nancy Remsen next to Susan and John Flowers from Middlebury's Addison Independent next to Nancy.

With things kind of day-to-day in Freyne Land due to chemotherapy, I can't predict just how things will go, but I was in great shape today. Pumped up. Delighted to be on the program with Sue Allen, who I've known since the Reagan Era when she landed at the Freeps [and tangled with when she was Ho-Ho's esteemed press secretary during his gubernatorial chapter]. And also excited about the opportunity to confront a bit of the Freyne Past - the Roman Catholic Church.

It's been front-page news all week -  the big civil lawsuit that began in Burlington in which a former Vermont altar boy is suing the Vermont Roman Catholic Diocese for damages due from being sexually assaulted by a Vermont parish priest way back in the 1970s.

Sam Hemingway at the Freeps and Brian Joyce at WCAX-TV have been all over it.

Yours truly has deliberately avoided this one, not because I was molested by a priest, but because when I walked out the door at Maryknoll 's college seminary in Glen Ellyn,  Illinois in early June of 1969,  I also walked out the door on the Roman Catholic Church. Quite simply, I was no longer believing it all anymore. And I could not accept the answers I got when I dared to asked questions.

Though the church-lawsuit story wasn't on the original VTW headline list Producer Joe Merone e-mailed out around noontime, yours truly insisted we address it.  It's reality and that's supposed to be the business we're in, right? 

Especially when you have Susan Via, a top prosecutor from the 1980s, testifying that Roman Catholic Bishop John Marshall had told her boss,  Roman Catholic States Attorney [and now judge] Mark Keller, a Notre Dame grad,  it would be "a sin of scandal" if he opened a criminal investigation into the child-molesting priest's conduct.

Give me an effing break!

That's NEWS.

And it's also a dramatic window into the religious establishment of the past, and the power once enjoyed by it's priests, monsignors and bishops, who were experts in the world of sin, eh?

Lot of balls in the air this Friday.

Hey, have a nice summer?

Our ol' pal from the Peoples Republic of Burlington's City-Hall news scene of the 1980s, Mark Johnson, had plenty to say about the latest in the Vermont delegation's trip to China this morning when he called his own WDEV talk show from the hotel in Beijing.

Mark told Eric Michaels on WDEV in Waterbury that the Vermont delegation, led by our Republican Gov. Jim Douglas, has been meeting with folks pretty high up in the food chain in the Chinese Departments of Agriculture and Tourism.

And we in Vermont do like tourists, right?

Their minister for tourism, he said, pointed out that the Chinese have a problem getting American tourist visas.

"In their view," said Johnson, "Americans view them as some kind of security problem."

Even with all the Chinese restaurants we've got?

Travel-wise, he said, 5 percent of Chinese tourists go to visit Europe. Only 1 percent come to the United States. And their most popular U.S. destination right now is, are you ready?

Las Vegas!

In Beijing, said Marko, "the buses are packed to the gills and everybody takes taxis. The ubiquity of taxis," he said, "is one of the surprises for me."

There's massive road construction underway in preparation for the Olympics next year. As one minister expressed it, "You are the most developed country" on the planet and we are "the biggest developing country."

Mark also said he's noticed the enormous gap between rich and poor. The folks building the roads "make 75 cents-an-hour and live in these sort of little box houses." They are "housed and fed and able to send money back home," he said.

"It's an economy that's like out of the 1920s in America," said the Vermont radio guy. "Everybody knows this isn't real and it can't last forever and it's superheated, but everybody's in because they're worried they might lose out."

And, by the way, there are no labor unions and only "emerging" environmental regulations. [Beijing, he described, as a very polluted city.] And paying off local leaders, said Johnson, "is pretty well acknowledged as a way of doing business here, and I would dare say, even in the United State of America."

Shocking!

"How are you treated?" asked Eric Michaels.

"When I came I was not billed as a journalist," replied Johnson. His business card, a vital tool in China, bills him as a "broadcast personality," he said, "so as to not accentuate the fact I'm a news guy."

He said Gov. Jimbo had introduced him earlier on Friday as a "journalist," and one Chinese official turned to him and said, "We didn't used to like journalists."

"And Gov. Douglas said something like, 'In the past, I haven't either.'"

Later, said Johnson, he suggested to the Guv, "Maybe we ought to lay off the "J" word for the rest of the trip?"

On Saturday morning at 7 a.m. China-time, the Vermonters head out on an hour-and-a-half drive north  to see the Great Wall of China firsthand!

Wonder if it could have gotten an Act 250 permit?

Just when we were wondering if the mainstream American press was ignoring Vermont's favorite socialist, Independent United States Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ol' Bernardo popped up "live" on two programs Thursday, the day of the Summer Solstice, the longest "day" of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Sanders started out in the morning as a half-hour "live" in-studio guest on "Washington Journal" on C-span. Here's a taste, as the Vermont leftist set a Republican caller straight:

I think you’re missing the main point about what goes on in Washington, DC.

The reason that the middle class is shrinking; the reason that poverty is increasing; the reason that the United States has by far the most unfair distribution of income of any industrialized country on Earth; the reason we are the only major nation on Earth that does not have a National Healthcare Program guaranteeing health care to all people is, in fact, the power of Big Money over the political process!

And you talk about taxation, well, under President Bush we have given hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and it took us until last week to raise the minimum wage to $7.25-an-hour over a three-year period!

We have children in this country who are living out on the streets and our veterans are not getting the type of health care that they need.

So I think when we look at what’s going on in Washington the real issue to focus on is the power of Big Money, the power of Corporate America in settings an agenda that is certainly at odds with the needs of working families.

Yep, he was in the zone.

Then Thursday evening, Sanders of Vermont was a "live" guest from Capitol Hill with someone who really endorses where he's coming from - CNN's Lou Dobbs.

SANDERS: A growing number of Americans understand that what happens in Congress, to a very significant degree, is dictated by Big Money interests. Their whole ideology is based on greed. They’re selling out American workers. In fact, they’re selling out our entire country. And that is a major struggle that we have got to engage in to take back our country from these very powerful and wealthy special interests.

In the good old days, the early 1970s when I was a nursing assistant in the surgery ward at General Hospital in downtown Minneapolis, they would have already drilled a hole into the Freyne skull [at right, as pictured yesterday]: "exploratory surgery" we called it.

General was a hot "teaching" hospital. Five color-coded surgery teams made up of seasoned five-year veterans in charge, all the way down to rookie interns fresh out of medical school. It was like one big M.A.S.H. unit, and several of the teaching pros with the scalpels were Vietnam vets.

Rich learning ground for this kid.

Risky business, too, but a lot of brain surgery was detective work. Finding out what caused what happened to happen. Unfortunately, the search for the answer inside a living brain often did its own damage, including speech or vision loss, paralysis, or death itself.

Fast forward to 2007. The mystery of the moment out there is answering the question: What caused that brain seizure I experienced when I was getting cancer "chemotherapy" dose #2 back in February up at the Mary Fanny? Only brain "seizure" this child of the Sixties has ever experienced. [Well, at least, only one that I remember.]

"Exploratory surgery" appears to be pretty much a thing of the past these days. Instead, in the computer age, they go high-tech with all kinds of scans. Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI, is the hot ticket these days. So they slid me on my back into the big MRI tube, put ear plugs in my ears, and I held still with my head in a cage for 45 minutes during lunchtime Wednesday while the MRI machine shot the Freyne Brain in three-dimensional imagery.

An hour later, I had an appointment with Dr. Harold Morris the neurologist [left]. He got the first look at the high-tech images and liked what he saw.

The white, fuzzy area in the left temporal lobe around the speech/language center [right side in the MRI picture],  was darker and not as fuzzy/light. Looks a whole lot more like the right temporal lobe, as it should.

Good sign, says he.

Clearly, even the Freyne Eye can see that the Freyne Brain isn't looking any worse.

Another good sign, says he.

The neurosurgeon and radiologist-types will take a peek, as well. But, hey, the fact that Dr. Morris doesn't want to see me again for six months is a damn good sign, eh?

P.S. Do have a surprise infection in the left hand - where I got the chemo two-times back.  Red, swollen and sore. Doc Morris persuaded me to stop by oncology to have 'em take a peek.

Good idea.

Couple of the Mary Fanny oncology nurses looked at it, recognized an infection right away and gave me a script for Keflex, an antibiotic. 

Keeping an eye on it this morning.

No problem with the feet. 

And Howard Dean [left], chairman of the Democratic National Committee, admitted it, too!

The setting was Waterbury radio station WDEV's "Mark Johnson Show" on Tuesday. Former State Rep. Peter Mallary was the fill-in host.

His old pal Howard Brush Dean III was his "special guest" via telephone. Yours truly wrote it up in today's "Inside Track" print column.

Here's a taste:

“I think we were doing great until the Iraq vote,” said the DNCchairman, “and that really upset an awful lot of people who wanted tobe out of Iraq.”

Certainly Ho-Ho knows that opposition to President George “WMD” Bush’s Iraq war is very, very strong in WDEV Land.

Dean said the Democrats in Washington didn’t come off looking toogood, in part because of what he termed “this complex press coverage,headlines like ‘Democrats Cave in to Bush,’ which really wasn’t true.”

But the problem the Dems have with the Iraq war, said Dean, is one of mathematics.

“We really had trouble with Iraq because, frankly, [Senate Democratic Leader] Harry Reid only has 49 votes,” noted Chairman Ho-Ho. [Connecticut Independent Sen.] Joe Lieberman votes with the Republicans on this issue. [South Dakota Democratic Sen.] Tim Johnson is out sick. He’ll be back in September, and we were outmaneuvered a little bit.”

How unusual to witness a political party leader admit to being “outmaneuvered” by the other side, eh?

“I think the next time that we try to shut down the war — perhapsin September,” said Dean, “we’ll be a little bit better prepared forthe machinations of the Republican minority in the Senate.”

One would hope.

It had the feel of one of those Douglasian proverbs delivered from the opposite side of Planet Earth to the folks back home in the Green Mountains.

Gov. Jim Douglas [left, in a recent WCAX appearance] was on a conference call Tuesday with a slice of the Vermont/N.Y. press/media from the worlds of radio, newspapers, TV, The Associated Press and that Internet thingy.

The Douglas line that really opened the window on how Jim Douglas truly understands the global-warming crisis was this one:

"To have a genuine positive impact on global warming, I would recommend that people look to the East.”

Look to the East?

Whatever you say, Grasshopper. But are you sure?

"I’ve said many times that Vermont has such a small imprint on the surface of the planet that we can do as much as possible and still not save a single polar bear or make any significant impact on global warming," said Vermont's Republican CEO.

"But China can have an impact because of the environmental challenges the environmental officials we’ve met with recognize and need to deal with. I would hope that Vermonters who have a serious interest in climate change would devote their time and energy to places like China where the potential for progress is far more significant," said Gov. Douglas.

He's not suggesting Vermonters take Act 250 to China, is he?

No way.

Reported Louis Porter in this morning's Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus:

"He just doesn't get it," said Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, and a leading supporter of the proposed new efficiency program.

"As everyone from the people I speak to on the street to Al Gore understand, if Vermont leads the way in terms of reducing our demand for oil other states will follow," he said. "That is the sort of leadership that is lacking and this bill [H. 520] provides it."

Here at the ranch it's "Inside Track" Day and energy is a hot topic indeed. Sen. Bernie Sanders, at right, went ga-ga at his retrofitting presser yesterday.

I'm telling you, you've got to love the divergence of views on the editorial pages in Vermont when it comes to facing global warming. Here's how the Brattleboro Reformer sees things:

Until the Legislature made climate change a key issue in this session, there was little incentive for Douglas to act. But now public support for expanding Efficiency Vermont's work is growing and Douglas has a choice. He can stand with Entergy, IBM and the rest of the major businesses in this state, who object to being taxed to pay for it, or he can stand with the people.

Here's the deal with the tax on Vermont Yankee. Right now, Entergy pays .001 cents per kilowatt hour generated -- a deal worked out in the then-Republican controlled House in 2003 without public imput or knowledge.

It is the only power generator in the state that pays a rate this low. H.520 would raise what Vermont Yankee pays to .003 cents per kilowatt hour, or the same rate that wind farms will pay.

Douglas can defend an out-of-state corporation's sweetheart tax deal, or he can support a bill that would make it easier for businesses and individuals to invest in small-scale renewable energy.

Then, try a world away up the Connecticut River in St. Johnsbury where the Caledonian-Record editorial page looks at it completely differently:

One more time, we are witnessing the fundamental difference between Republicans and liberal Democrats. Republicans value self-reliance and minimal government. Liberal Democrats want a nanny-state wherein government wipes our financial noses at every opportunity and pays for it by taxing everything in sight. Shumlin's plan is essentially two knee-jerk liberal reactions: set up a bureaucracy, reward your like-minded pals - Paul Cillo, Scudder Parker, Cheryl Rivers, et al - with newly created jobs, and pay for it with new tax money.

The question is fundamental. Do we require or want a nanny state or do we want a self-reliant citizenry? We opt for the latter. There isn't a reason in the world that the government should do for free what citizens can afford to do themselves. Put a little more bluntly, there isn't a reason in the world that the government should fix your house or mine and pay for it with Vermont Yankee dollars, confiscated from Entergy by a totally unethical last-minute tax grab. We urge our legislators to swamp the effort to override the governor's veto with a resounding NO!